The Soviet Union and Syria

Efraim Karsh

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781138998124
• eBook ISBN: 9781317818502
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Regional Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This Chatham House Paper examines the nature of Soviet relations with Syria, assessing the commitments made and the gains reaped by Moscow and Damascus in the economic, military and political spheres. After discussing Soviet interests in the region in general and with regard to Syria in particular, the author traces the evolution of the relationship between Moscow and its major Middle Eastern ally since Asad came to power in 1970.

While the study argues that huge Soviet military aid has intensified the pro-Soviet alignment of Syrian policy, it contends that Asad's perception of his country's national interests has also played a large part in shaping the relationship. The author concludes that both sides have gained from what is an interdependent relationship. If Damascus remains almost wholly dependent on Soviet military aid, regional constraints give Syria some leverage over Moscow. Without Moscow's support Syria might perhaps not have played such a leading role in the region; without Damascus the Soviet Union might have found itself on the sidelines of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

1

Introduction

Alien as it is to Marxist-Leninist ideology, geopolitical thinking has played a focal role in the shaping of Soviet policy towards the Middle East.¹ This is hardly surprising; direct physical contiguity has made the USSR susceptible to the vicissitudes of this volatile area and thus ineluctably interested in its fate. The Soviet Union cannot remain indifferent to the situation arising in the Near and Middle East,’ read a foreign ministry statement, issued in April 1955 in response to the formation of the Baghdad Pact, ‘since … the USSR is situated very close to these countries’; consequently, the ‘establishment of foreign military bases on the territory of the countries of the Near and Middle East has a direct bearing on the security of the USSR.’²

A recurrent theme in later Soviet references to the region, the statement provides a striking illustration of the unique position of the Middle East in Soviet political and strategic thinking. To Russia, latterly the Soviet Union, the Middle East is not just another Third World area; it is the area, for no reason other than that it is the most volatile part of the Third World immediately adjoining Russian territory, and as such is a vital component of the Russian defence perimeter.³ The USSR’s fundamental interest in the Middle East has therefore been essentially identical with the one held in its immediate European neighbours – Finland, the Baltic countries, the Balkans before World War II, and Central Europe since then – namely, the attainment of a stable and safe frontier in order to minimize potential threats emanating from all these contiguous territories. Stability in this context means both the prevention of external great-power intervention and the preservation of a benevolent local environment. In the case of the Middle East, this interest was further reinforced by Russia’s long-standing desire to control the Bosphorus Straits and the Dardanelles in order to provide an outlet for its naval activities in the rest of the world, as well as to block the passage of European warships into the Black Sea.

This geopolitical reality illustrates the fundamental difference between Soviet interest in the Middle East and that of any other great power: whereas Western interest in the Middle East, however vital, is purely circumstantial, Soviet interest is of a structural nature; whereas Western interest in the area is confined to the global level, the USSR has viewed the Middle East in predominantly regional terms. This is not to deny the relevance of global considerations in the making of Soviet policy towards the Middle East, particularly in the postwar system with its intensifying superpower competition for assets in the Third World. Nevertheless, Soviet policy towards this area has revealed far greater constancy and far less dependence on the fluctuations of global events than Western, and in particular American, policies.

Indeed, it is the geographical factor which, by and large, accounts for the lack of Soviet interest in the Arab world until the mid-1950s. Lying further to the south and not contiguous to Soviet territory, these countries were insignificant by comparison with those states immediately adjoining Soviet territory. True, the Arab world has undeniable geostrategic and economic advantages: it occupies a considerable land mass, sits astride waterways of strategic importance and is blessed with abundant deposits of oil. But since the existence of independent Arab states is a relatively new phenomenon, and as the Arab world remained under Western control or influence until the late 1940s or early 1950s, the Soviets were slow to discover the Arab ‘revolutionary potential’; instead the USSR focused on the countries of the ‘northern tier’ – Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan – where its security was more immediately involved and with which its relations had been long and intensive.

Furthermore, there is little doubt that the initial motivation behind the resurgence of Soviet interest in the Arab world in the mid-1950s was directly related to Moscow’s preoccupation with the ‘northern tier’: namely, its desire to undermine the Baghdad Pact which, from the Soviet point of view, constituted a major security threat. Not only did the Pact transform what had been an effective buffer zone in the prewar period into an important link in the worldwide chain of Western containment strategy, but it also meant the extension of NATO’s military power to the USSR’s backyard, thus turning it into a potential theatre of war.⁴

In these circumstances, Moscow soon began to look for ways and means to stem the West’s mounting military power in the Middle East. Unwilling to risk a frontal assault on the USSR’s southern neighbours à la Stalin, the Soviet leadership sought to contain the Baghdad Pact by adopting an indirect approach: by keeping Afghanistan out of the Pact and trying to pool together those Arab countries opposed to the alliance. These attempts struck a responsive chord in Cairo and Damascus. Considering Iraq the major obstacle to his aspirations to forge a united Arab bloc under Egyptian leadership, President Gamal Abd Al-Nasser sought to dissuade other Arab countries from adhering to the Baghdad Pact; having failed to obtain Western military and economic backing for his goals, Nasser opted for a closer relationship with the USSR.

Syria, by contrast, was driven in the direction of the USSR by mainly defensive considerations. Notorious for its domestic instability and surrounded by hostile countries, Syria’s sense of insecurity rose sharply in 1955, following Israel’s retaliatory raids on the Arab countries, on the one hand, and Iraqi and Turkish overt threats, accompanied by military shows of force aimed at deflecting Syrian opposition to the Baghdad Pact, on the other. In March 1955 the Soviet Union responded to reported Turkish and Iraqi troop concentrations on the Syrian border by announcing a readiness to extend to Syria ‘aid in any form whatsoever for the purpose of safeguarding Syria’s independence and sovereignty’.⁵ This display of support led shortly to the signing of the first Soviet-Syrian arms deal in the autumn of 1955, and within less than two years Syria is estimated to have purchased more than £100 million worth of Eastern bloc weapons.⁶ During the summer and autumn of 1957, the Soviet Union again shielded Damascus from Turkish military pressures, going so far as to threaten that any aggression against Syria ‘would not remain limited to this area alone’, as well as to dispatch a small naval unit on an official visit to Syria – a show of force hitherto unprecedented in a Middle Eastern, perhaps even Third World, crisis. Finally, the Soviets underscored their support for Syria by signing, on 29 October 1957, a large-scale economic and technical agreement at a total cost of $579 million.⁷

Soviet-Syrian relations underwent a qualitative leap in February 1966, following the rise to power of the left-wing faction of the Ba’th Party. Overthrowing the old leadership of the Ba’th in a bloody coup (the Ba’th had been in power since 8 March 1963), the left-wing regime swiftly moved towards the Soviet Union. In the economic sphere, the Syrian government came to rely almost exclusively on Soviet aid for implementing its various programmes, including the exploitation of Syria’s oil resources and the construction of the Euphrates Dam. In the military field, the seriousness of Syria’s defeat in the June 1967 War, along with the drying up of Western weapons sources following that war, considerably enhanced the importance of Soviet military aid for the survival of the Ba’th regime. Finally, the USSR utilized both the ideological affinity betweeen the two regimes and Syria’s growing hostility towards the West (best illustrated by the severance of diplomatic relations with the major Western powers in the wake of the Six-Day War) in order to develop closer bonds with Damascus. Thus, for example, from the spring of 1966 onwards the Syrian Communist Party, though remaining officially illegal, resumed its activities on the Syrian political scene: its leader, Khaled Bakhdash, was allowed to return to Syria in April 1966 after eight years of exile in Eastern Europe; the communist newspaper Sawt Al-Arab received permission to be published, and a communist was appointed Minister of Communications.⁸

Against this backdrop, and notwithstanding occasional frictions with the left-wing Ba’th, the USSR viewed the relationship in highly positive terms and resisted any attempt to rock the fragile edifice of the Syrian political system. Given Syria’s record of political instability, the Soviets feared that any change of leadership in Damascus could only be detrimental to their interests. Such apprehensions were exacerbated by the persistent advocacy of a more independent Syrian line by General Hafiz Asad, the Minister of Defence and major contender for the leadership, who was known for his outspoken opposition to Damascus’s growing reliance on the USSR.

The intensity of Moscow’s distrust of Asad was clearly demonstrated by its reaction to his assumption of de facto power in March 1969. Interrupting a vacation in the USSR, the Soviet Ambassador, Nuridin Mukhidinov, rushed back to Damascus, where he reportedly warned Asad that his complete seizure of power might lead to the withdrawal of Soviet aid and experts from Syria.⁹ The Soviet media, for its part, did not conceal its resentment of Asad’s attempt to alter the existing balance of forces within the Syrian leadership: The internal reaction [in Syria] joined hands with imperialist circles, striving to interrupt the process of socialist transformation,’ wrote Krasnaya Zvezda on 6 March, ‘to weaken Syria’s position in its struggle against the Israeli occupiers, to undermine its international position and its relations with the forces of liberation and with the socialist countries.’ The Syrian Communist Party was far more outspoken in its criticism. In two statements issued in early and mid-March, the party condemned the developments in Damascus as endangering the unity of the Syrian progressive forces and warned that ‘any failure to settle the crisis in accordance with … the framework of the anti-imperialist progressive policy which Syria adopted on 23 February 1966 … [might] harm the existing relations between Syria and the USSR and other friendly socialist bloc countries.’¹⁰

Asad responded in kind. In an interview published on 17 March by the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph, he did not hesitate to put the blame for his country’s domestic and external problems on the USSR. In Asad’s view, the ‘Soviet-inspired, communist-type regime’ in Damascus had reduced Syria from ‘the granary of the Middle East’ to an impoverished country and served to isolate it from its Arab neighbours. The recovery of Syria from this débâcle required the cessation of ‘any interference in a country’s internal affairs by another country’, as well as the reorganization of the Ba’th Party and the purge of ‘extreme leftists in ruling positions’. At the time of this interview, anti-communist feelings were mounting in Damascus, accompanied by reported arrests of hundreds of communists and purges of pro-Soviet elements in the military.

Given this atmosphere of mutual distrust, perhaps even hostility, between the Soviet leadership and Asad, the latter’s advent to power in November 1970 certainly did not augur well for Soviet-Syrian relations; indeed, this development gave rise to a wave of hopes and speculations in the West on a dramatic shift in Syria’s domestic (i.e., socio-economic) and international orientations.

However, these expectations have been belied by the course of events. Not only has Damascus not broken with Moscow, but it has also developed into the USSR’s major Middle Eastern ally: a cosignatory to a bilateral Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation, a recipient of vast military and economic support, and a supplier of political, military and strategic services. Moreover, it is Soviet aid and support which, to a considerable extent, has enabled Asad to transform Syria from a weak country – the object of inter-Arab competition, whose name was synonymous with internal instability – into a regional political and military power whose wishes and interests cannot be ignored.

Broadly speaking, Soviet-Syrian relations from 1970 onwards have undergone two distinct stages, divided by Anwar Sadat’s historic visit to Jerusalem in November 1977 and the ensuing Egyptian-Israeli peace process. Until then, the balance sheet of Soviet-Syrian relations clearly tilted in Syria’s favour, as the steady Egyptian drift from the Soviet orbit combined with Syria’s growing regional standing and influence to increase Moscow’s dependence on Damascus. This state of affairs has been fundamentally, though not precipitously, reversed in the period since then, during which President Asad, strengthened in his view that Egypt’s desertion of the Arab camp left Syria as the sole active champion of the Arab cause, embarked on an ambitious effort to achieve the ‘strategic parity’ with Israel that would enable Syria, on its own, to ‘regain the usurped Arab rights’. Since the attainment of this objective, as well as the stemming of the mounting tide of domestic opposition to the Asad regime in the late 1970s and early 1980s, required substantial Soviet aid and support, Moscow’s leverage over Damascus has increased significantly. This change in fortunes has, in turn, enabled Moscow to consolidate its relations with Damascus while at the same time attempting to broaden its power base in the Arab world, a policy that gained particular momentum under Chernenko and Gorbachev.

The evolution of Soviet-Syrian relations has progressed along three major, interconnected axes, the most important of which is the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is this prolonged and bitter struggle between Arabs and Jews that has created the main avenue for the broadening and deepening of Soviet-Syrian relations, as well as an unsettled bone of contention marring those very relations. The second axis of Soviet-Syrian relations has been the inter-Arab arena, where the Soviet Union has had to manoeuvre between the rivalries and enmities of its radical Arab allies (e.g., Syrian-Iraqi and Syrian-PLO feuds) and its anxiety to keep the relationship with Syria intact, while at the same time broadening Soviet foreign policy beyond the traditional radical camp.

Finally, since the mid-1970s, and particularly since the establishment of a permanent Syrian presence in Lebanon in June 1976, the evolution of Soviet-Syrian relations has become increasingly dependent on the vicissitudes of the Lebanese civil war. Thus, as Lebanon formed the stage for a series of Syrian-Israeli crises, leading ultimately to war, as well as for the power struggle between Damascus and the PLO, it constituted the backdrop against which Soviet-Syrian relations played out some of their most trying moments.

How can this development of Soviet-Syrian relations, from mutual distrust and wariness to proximity and convergence, be explained? What goals and motivations have shaped the evolution of Soviet policy towards Syria during the Asad era? What means and techniques have been used in pursuit of these goals? These are the major questions addressed in this study.

2

Cooperation and Conflict

The formative years

Fully aware of his ‘anti-Soviet’ reputation, Asad made it one of his immediate goals following his accession to power on 13 November 1970 to reassure the USSR of Syria’s future course. As well as including two communists in the new government, the newly established Provisional Regional Command of the Ba’th Party released a statement announcing its continued adherence to the guidelines set by ‘the Party’s congresses and theories’, and its intention to ‘develop relations with the socialist camp, particularly with the friendly USSR’.¹

Three months later, in February 1971, another move was made to consolidate Soviet-Syrian relations when Asad paid his first official visit to the USSR as head of state. Despite the surfacing of certain differences, in particular Syria’s rejection of Security Council Resolution 242 as a basis for an Arab-Israeli settlement, the visit completely dispelled any remaining hopes in the West of a reversal in Syria’s foreign policy orientation. Rather, it underlined the two parties’ keen interest in continuing their sp...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Cooperation and conflict
• 3. Crisis over Lebanon
• 4. Towards a bilateral treaty
• 5. From crisis to war
• 6. From Brezhnev to Gorbachev
• 7. Conclusions
• Notes
• Appendices